Emerging Voices: Plastics: Then and Now

When you think of the word plastic, what comes to mind? Instead of one specific item, I’m sure a variety of different objects come to mind, from bags and containers to pipes and fabrics. These different forms of plastics often have vastly different characteristics. For instance, when changing the battery of a television remote, you have to be careful in handling and removing the back cover in order to not break the small clip that holds the cover in place. But we also have heavy-duty portable battery systems that can be tossed around and taken outdoors for camping or backup power. Plastics have undoubtedly come a long way in technological advances. To understand some of these changes, it is important to know where it all started and the different plastics developed throughout the years.

What exactly are plastics? Modern plastics encompass a group of materials that are composed of synthetic or semi-synthetic polymers. The word plastic itself is derived from the Greek word “plastikos,” which means pliable and capable of being molded. With this definition, some natural plastics popularly used since antiquity are animal horns (e.g., ivory), shellac, rubber, amber, and tortoiseshell. Animal horns became malleable as they were heated and were ideal for items such as billiard balls, piano keys, and extravagant combs (1). However, with the Industrial Revolution increasing the scale of manufactured goods, animals such as elephants were in danger of extinction as their tusks were harvested for those goods.

Synthetic polymers. To solve this environmental and ecological problem, celluloid was developed in the mid-19th century as an alternative to ivory for the production of billiard balls. Celluloid is made from nitrocellulose (or cellulose nitrate) derived from plant fibers such as cotton or wood pulp. British metallurgist Alexander Parkes created the first celluloid and patented his discovery in 1862 as Parkesine (1). However, the development of celluloids as we know them today is credited to American inventor John Wesley Hyatt and his brother Isaiah, who improved upon Parkes’s innovation.

The Hyatt brothers treated nitrocellulose with camphor, which made the material more stable and less prone to cracking. John Wesley Hyatt patented his invention in 1869 as “celluloid” (2) and, in 1870, formed the Albany Dental Plate Company to manufacture goods with his new material, such as false teeth (as the name suggests), billiard balls, and piano keys. Celluloid was a...